Skyfall

Bond is back - or is he? With 007 shot and plunging down to disappear into a waterfall like Sherlock Holmes in The Final Problem, MI6 blown to hell both physically and digitally, and M being forced into retirement . . . could this be the end?

Gangster Squad

By 1949, Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn), a New York Jew, has gone West to follow his manifest destiny to take over Los Angeles and then the whole of the Western United States through buying politicians, judges, and cops with profits from his vice, gambling, and drug rackets.

Sam Phillips: Push Any Button

You make modern accommodations from audience reactionStereo realistDisconnected exposure meter

Start counting everybodyIt's gonna blowPretty Time BombYou're a mirror of your times

Not the average opening lyrics of your average chanteuse. But then, Sam Phillips has never been anyone's average singer/songwriter, as she herself acknowledges: "I never could go with the crowd / Even though they seemed to know where they were going."

Audiophile Pistols

When you say the words "audiophile release," people generally don't think first of the Sex Pistols. But don't forget that Never Mind The Bollocks... Here's The Sex Pistols was produced by two veterans of the golden age of British studio wizardry: Chris Thomas (who played on the White Album and recorded Pink Floyd, Badfinger, and Roxy Music, to name but a few) and Bill Price (who designed the legendary AIR Studios).

Rio Grande and Johnny Guitar

This week Olive Films are releasing these two classic westerns from the early 1950s. Rio Grande (1950) is part of what is known as John Ford’s cavalry trilogy — along with Fort Apache (1948) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) — based on stories by James Warner Bellah.

Daft Punk: Random Access Memories

In this era of electronic dance music, you might think the pioneering French duo Daft Punk would be eager to trump the upstarts. But you’d be thinking wrong.

As Thomas Bangalter told Rolling Stone, “We wanted to do what we used to do with machines and samplers but with people.” And as Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo said, “It’s not that we can’t make crazy, futuristic-sounding stuff, but we wanted to play with the past.”

Ivan's Childhood

Many big-budget movies are actually radio serials with special effects. Many dramas are just theatrical productions that have leaked off the stage. And then there are real films of which this is one. Mood and meaning are created by the visuals and cinematic language, not just the music.

Nine Inch Nails: Hesitation Marks

Trent Reznor already came back haunted in March with the release of Welcome oblivion by How to destroy angels. That side project with Atticus Ross and (Reznor’s wife) Mariqueen Maandig took post-industrial/ambient music and made it sound fresh. By contrast, Hesitation Marks, Reznor’s first album in five years under the Nine Inch Nails moniker, seems beset by run-of-the-mill electronica. Ross and another veteran collaborator, Alan Moulder, return as co-producers with Reznor, but together they’re often just busy little techno-bees buzzing around Reznor’s generally average material.